Immigration guidelines taking shape
Democrats slam plans unveiled Sunday night
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration revealed a set of immigration demands Sunday night — including the building of a wall on the southern border and major changes to the legal immigration system— as tradeoffs for legislation to protect Dreamers, a move that could kill prospects for a deal to protect roughly 700,000 young people now facing possible deportation.
The White House proposals would curb the ability of American citizens to sponsor family members to join them from abroad, upending decades of immigration policy, and put strict new limits on asylum claims. The list also includes increased money for border security and mandatory use of the government’s E-verify system for employers to ensure that workers they hire are legal residents.
Also on the list is a tighter crackdown on sanctuary cities, localities that decline to cooperate fully with federal immigration authorities.
The list also included measures to more quickly remove minors who have crossed into the United States from Central America in recent years seeking asylum.
The proposal would reduce the number of permanent resident visas issued, lower the number of refugees accepted, restrict family-based green cards to spouses and minor children, and create a point-based system for legal immigration. Administration officials would not say how much legal immigration would be reduced under the plan.
Democrats denounced the plans, saying they did not come close to what President Donald Trump and congressional Democratic leaders had discussed over Chinese food last month at the White House when they struck a tentative deal for legislation to protect the Dreamers, young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children.
“This list goes so far beyond what is reasonable. This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise,” Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement.
The wall, specifically, was off the table, Schumer and Pelosi have said.
Trump announced last month that he would end the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provided a temporary legal status for the Dreamers.